“All good wishes to you from myself and the Staff. “Sincerely yours, “ELIOT A. RODGERS, “_Curator of Ornithology_.” Mather folded the letter thoughtfully and thrust it into the pocket of his flannel shirt. With the buttoning down of the flap he seemed to dismiss his irritation and become again the seasoned museum collector, taking each task as it comes and subjugating all personal desires to the duties of his calling. As he turned again to the half-skinned bird before him he summoned his Indian guide and general assistant in the terse Spanish fashion, “Pedro--_ven aquí!_” “_Ahora sí, patrón_,” sing-songed the Quichua from the cooking lean-to near by. “_Yo no más!_” In a moment he stood before the white man, a squat, stolid figure with the humble eyes of a whipped dog. Mather snipped the wing bones of the bird close to the body and stripped the skin down the neck and over the skull to the eyes, turning it inside out skilfully. A few crunching clips with his scissors separated head from neck and exposed the base of the brain. He set the raw body aside and commenced scooping out the clotted, grayish matter from the interior of the skull. As he worked he spoke pointedly. “You know Chuquipata, Pedro?” A grunt and nod signified the Indian’s assent. In the presence of the American his words were customarily few, a reticence inspired not so much by awe of his employer as by inherited fear of the whites handed down from the days of the first enslaving of his race by the Spanish _conquistadores_ four centuries ago. “Rough country, isn’t it? _Muchas quebradas--no?_” Another affirmative, more vehement this time. Then, “You not go there, _patrón_?” Mather finished cleaning the birdskin, dusted its inner surface with arsenic and alum powder to cure and preserve it, and turned it right side out again. “Yes, we go to Chuquipata in three days,” he answered as he shook the ruffled feathers into place and began filling out the skin with cotton. “You will go to the village to-morrow and get _cargadores_ to carry the outfit. Four good men I will need, Pedro. Or, if you can find them, two mules instead; pack animals are better than men, but there are not many to be had. See what you can do.” He dismissed the man with a wave of the hand, and tied an identifying label to the crossed feet of his specimen. As carefully as if it were of the most fragile and costly porcelain he wrapped the tiny green and yellow effigy of the bird in cotton to hold it in shape until feathers and skin should dry, and added it to the rows of similar mummies in the tray of his collector’s trunk.